Training Alone to Play Together App

Project Information

TAPTAPP

Grant agreement ID: 101069291

DOI

10.3030/101069291

Project closed

EC signature date 17 March 2022

Start date 1 June 2022

End date 30 November 2023

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 150 000,00

Coordinated by

CEU GMBH
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TAPTAPP (Training Alone to Play Together App)

Reporting period: 2022-06-01 to 2023-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Making music together is far from easy. It requires not only individual skills and musical expertise, but the ability to coordinate one's actions with others. Apart from agreeing on how to play a particular piece together, musicians need to adjust to each other on a millisecond timescale. They also need to be able to imagine joint musical outcomes resulting from their individual contributions, and they sometimes need to resist following others, such as when singing a canon together or keeping different tempi. Typically, musicians try to improve their joint performances by practicing together. However, there are two aspects of joint practice that limit musicians' ability to improve their coordination. First, musicians typically practice specific pieces when playing together. By agreeing on interpretations and identifying specific coordination points, they can improve joint performances of the specific pieces they are practicing. However, this kind of piece-centered joint practice is not optimal for improving joint coordination skills in music in more general ways. A second problem with joint practice is that finding musical partners and finding time for joint rehearsals is challenging, even during non-pandemic times. If individuals had a way to practice joint coordination skills on their own, they could spend considerably more time improving their joint music making abilities.

This is why we invented TAPTAPP. The aim of our project is to develop an app (called TAPTAPP - short for "train alone to play together app"), that will help musicians at any level of expertise to improve their joint playing skills by practicing on their own. Building on basic research on interpersonal coordination and learning of joint actions that was funded by an ERC Consolidator grant, TAPTAPP comprises highly targeted training in two abilities that are fundamental for joint music making - the ability to integrate the contributions of self and other and the ability to keep self and other apart. We will make TAPTAPP freely available so that musicians can use it for their practice, and we aim to develop and refine it further as we continue to receive feedback from users.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project consisted of the following main activities and achievements:
1. Composition of musical material to be used in TAPTAPP. For this, we worked closely together with a composer who developed the musical material for all the exercises in consultation with us.
2. Planning of our validation study. Before developing TAPTAPP as a web application prototype, we needed to assess its effectiveness through a lab-based study. Planning involved identification of musical pieces used in the validation study (i.e. musical pieces the musicians play before and after training with the app so that we can assess the effectiveness of the training); modification and preparation of the musical material to be used in TAPTAPP; programming of virtual agent; development and design of exercises and level structure; development of graphical user interface; programming of the first TAPTAPP prototype.
3. Before conducting the lab based study on TAPTAPP's effectiveness, we tested our prototype at the International Summer Academy (ISA) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (https://www.isa-music.org/en/) in summer 2023.
4. Based on feedback received by ISA students, we developed a second prototype.
5. We developed the validation study protocol and collected data for the validation study from musicians. Data collection involved 16 pairs of musicians. Each pair spent around 7.5 hours in the lab, spread out across three separate sessions.
6. The next steps are to analyze the data in depth and to determine the effectiveness of training with TAPTAPP. For this purpose, we analyze musicians' performance in depth, as well as asking independent musical experts to rate the musicians' performances.
7. Based on the results the prototype will be adjusted and then made available as a free web application


Our major outcomes include:
1. Development of a TAPTAPP prototype that incorporates feedback from users (junior expert musicians)
2. Completion of a big validation study
3. Based on the validation study, identification of the most useful training aspects
4. Further development of TAPTAPP into a freely accessible web application (ongoing)
5. Dissemination to scientific and general audiences (so far, two conference presentations; a video explaining the project to a lay audience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI_yh1XIMPA; 1-2 scientific articles reporting the validation study will be published)

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The data collected from musicians clearly showed that our app includes challenging and relevant exercises. Verbal feedback was highly positive and confirmed that offering different levels of difficulty and a range of different exercises and musical material is useful and makes practice enjoyable. Our project has a clear impact on music education, adding a promising new tool for learners wishing to practice their joint music making skills.
Users' reports suggest that practicing different coordination patterns with virtual partners could be relevant not only for practicing musical skills, but social interaction skills more generally. In particular, the need for keeping self and other apart and remaining unperturbed in the presence of variable and over-adaptive partners proved to important. Training this ability could have psychological/mental health benefits beyond the domain of music.
Further analyses of the data collected during the validation study is necessary to quantify how much practicing with our app improves performance compared to individual and joint practice of specific musical pieces. We are currently working on turning the app prototype into a fully web-based app.